Fishboy Read online

  Pull, John, pull! said the ruby eater, and the Idiot drew up two lengths of knotted rope. I can’t hold much longer, said the ruby eater, looking up, searching for a face to plead into, the king killer looking down, searching for a dark-form mouth to keep out of, the flesh-wringing shackles dripping blood between them.

  I could not make out what the Idiot was trying to say when he let go of the knotted rope. It was a strangled speech more painful and fearful than the noise he had made when he choked on the fishbone in the galley.

  I let go of the Idiot’s shirttail and leaned over the rail. We watched the foamy bubbles bloom in the water where the men had been delivered into the sea and I wondered how I would explain it.

  Mr. Watt said it was bad luck to throw a piece of rope overboard when I told him what had happened. He said it was bad luck to throw rope overboard, bad luck to turn hatch covers over, bad luck to play cards while a net is out. He said there were always good reasons for superstitions, that rope can foul a propeller, that rogue waves could flood uncovered hatches, that a man with a strong poker hand will forget his nets and let them split with an abundance of fish. Mr. Watt said there was always a good reason for superstition, and I shouldn’t have thrown the knotted rope overboard.

  But I didn’t throw the rope over, I said to him. I was smearing warm lard on the places the sun had burned his inside-out organs and flesh. I tried to tell him how the Idiot let go of the rope while we were trying to save the two men.

  Yes, but you untied it in the first place, said Mr. Watt, and I could not deny that. I had not denied it, even when John had asked me out on deck if I had or not, and I nodded yes. It would have been hard to deny anyway with Ira Dench saying he saw me do it, he saw me do it while he and Lonny and the man who said Fuck were fighting the cook. Ira Dench said he saw me look over the rail at the poor men and then he saw me untie their knotted rope.

  You are an evil little boy, John had said to me.

  I told you he was evil, Ira Dench said, Ira Dench, John, Lonny, and the weeping Fuck man having subdued the rumored cook. It was John who finally laid the cook out with one punch, one punch squarely in the face, the force of it laying the cook neatly on his back, a great weight dropped from a small height. We stood around the cook and watched his rubbery face decompress the pit the punch had made. An amber liquid oozed from one nostril, then more amber liquid slid from the other.

  I think you ruptured his brain bag, said Ira Dench, and John said he hadn’t thought he had hit him that hard.

  Damn it, and I’m about to starve, Lonny said. Nice going, John, he said.

  As we looked down at the cook and Lonny’s stomach rumbled, there was movement in the cook’s nose. It was not twitching like he was about to sneeze. The movement came from underneath the skin, like a mole tunneling through cropped grass.

  The thing that crawled out of the cook’s nose threading through his nostril hairs fell dazed on the cook’s upper lip and swam on its back. It then lifted its wings and buzzed away. Another bee crawled from the other nostril, then two more, the makings of a small swarm, the last blown out by a snort, the last a large queen, trailing honey and a thread of snot.

  Behold, the new cook, John said. Try to keep your ax out of this one, Lonny.

  Lonny looked down at the cook and said That’s nothing, and Lonny told his story of how a tiny sliver of steel had flecked into his thumb once when he was younger. Lonny said he had squeezed and squeezed the little hole the steel had gone into but it wouldn’t come up. Lonny said his thumb swoll up to the size of a blackjack and was so sensitive it hurt for the wind to blow on it, and while I pretended to listen to Lonny’s story I watched John go to where the bosun’s chair had been tied and look over the rail. Lonny said one day he was up on a roof hammering shingles with a big hangover, a headache so big his thumb throbbed harder, his thumb so swoll the thumbnail was buried deep in the swelling with the skin cracked around it. Lonny said he was dizzy with the pain, the sun was hot, and he was thinking of just climbing down off the roof and getting a saw and cutting that fucking thumb right off, it hurt so bad.

  I listened to Lonny and watched John’s face darken, and I saw Ira Dench watch John stalking the deck and then look at me, and I knew I could not explain what had happened to the two men in prison blues.

  Lonny said he could, when he was younger, drive in a nail with one blow of the hammer, and he was just going to nail in a couple more shingles before coming down off the roof to cut off his thumb with a saw when instead of bringing the hammer down in one terrific blow to the nail head, he brought the terrific blow down on his aching thumb, smashing it flat.

  I saw John fill a bucket with cold seawater to rouse the cook, and I knew that he was rousing the cook because we were shorthanded to haul in the net, and I knew we were shorthanded because the two men shackled together had been lost over the side, and I saw that Ira Dench was anxious for Lonny to finish his story so Ira could tell John I had done it, Fishboy had untied the bosun’s knotted rope, Fishboy, the little bad-luck rogue wave devil, me not even knowing they would be calling me evil too.

  Lonny said he was no nancy, but in the pain of smashing his thumb flat he fainted right away. But the best part, Lonny said, was when I woke up, I saw that all the infection had smashed out and in the stream of pus that had squirted across the roof I found the little silver sliver!

  Ira Dench was fast to congratulate Lonny on his thumb story and was quick to agree that compared to what had come out of the cook’s nose, Lonny’s story had beat him out, saying, pointing down to where the cook was doused in cold seawater, Yeah, that’s nothing, but John, where are those guys in the bosun’s chair? Ira Dench knowing I had untied their knotted rope, them not even in the bosun’s chair, them just hanging on to the paint by their devil’s claws. I knew I would not be able to explain that to John and Ira, I knew I could not explain how a large shark had come along and the Idiot had let go of the rope, so when John asked me if I had untied it, all I could do was nod yes.

  I did not think that what I had done was evil or was bad luck, I told Mr. Watt, and Mr. Watt said that there was a reason for everything, even for the white ship to leave us with such a strange cook, the cook who sat in the cold water of John’s dousing, his head suddenly cleared of the noises within, the taste of honey on his lips. He said there was a reason the white-hulled ship had come looking for somebody who had done something bad to somebody black, and a reason it had gone away without arresting John or Lonny or Ira or the man who said Fuck. Mr. Watt said it could have taken any of them but it had not. Mr. Watt said Lonny last month slipped away from where he was supposed to have been filling the water tanks with a slow hose, slipped away to a bar, a black man in there stacking dimes on the edge of his glass on a bet. Lonny being in a hurry, the stack of dimes fell into the glass just as Lonny ordered a drink. The man grabbed Lonny’s collar and Lonny apologized and offered to buy the man a drink, offered to pick up any dimes that may have fallen on the floor, and Lonny bent down, and just as gently as a fancy tailor fitting some pants to get a good inseam measure Lonny slipped his knife into the man’s ankle and brought it up all the way to his crotch, the man’s leg open perfectly along the inseam through trouser and muscle so that in his first step the man’s skeleton stick of bone walked right out of his leg. That was just last month, Mr. Watt said. Mr. Watt said they could have come for Lonny but they had not, they had not even come for the weeping man who said Fuck, who Mr. Watt said used to be so happy in love that his singing while he mended John’s nets drove everybody crazy until they were blown ashore one night and he found out he was husband number six on his number-one wife. That was an awful fix we barely got him out of, said Mr. Watt. Mr. Watt said after the weeping man had killed his wife with one of her husbands he sewed them together the way he had first found them, thousands of stitches, the bodies black with stitches and then black with flies as the stitching together took days. When he was through stitching them together he began to cry at what he had do
ne and was only able to speak his one word. His neighbors found him slithering along the roadside trying to crawl beneath rocks, trying to fold mudbanks over himself for an early burial. The man broke from his neighbors and they found him weeping and saying his word at the bottom of a muddy well, and when they took him home they found his handiwork, his signature in his stitchery. It made the papers, Mr. Watt said.

  I lathered Mr. Watt’s sun-scorched neck with the lard. He said the white-hulled ship could have come and taken anyone it wanted, John with his jugular jabbing fingernails, Ira Dench who doubles his fortune-telling string as a garrote. Somebody doing something bad to somebody black. That’s rich, said Mr. Watt.

  The sun was setting early behind a high wall of pumice smoke and steam and I lit a candle to see better where to apply the lard. I held the candle up to Mr. Watt’s face forgetting his sensitive albino-like eyes, but it did not seem to matter, his eyeballs remained fixed, the pupils large and open. I began to touch the lard in places around Mr. Watt’s face and he flinched as if he had not seen the approach of my greasy fingers.

  Let me tell you about somebody doing something bad to somebody black, said Mr. Watt. Once, when I was about your age, said Mr. Watt, I had to leave my country. Everyone was starving. I had to run at night and sleep in logs during the day because of the way I looked and because of the sun. I wandered into a rocky region where the soil was poor. I came across a small stone house, a house like I would like to have one day. The house had a small door and no windows, the yard was strewn with the chewed heels of shoes. There was a small well house and I was so thirsty I didn’t hear a large dog come up behind me. I felt his breath on me, his hungry mouth watering at the way I must have smelled like raw steak to him. The dog growled and an old black man with coarse red hair came out of the stone house saying Who is there? I answered that I only wanted a sip of water and then I would be on my way. The old black farmer cocked his head and said it sounded like I was hungry, too, would I like some soup?

  I had not eaten in several days, and with the dog following and growling, I entered his dark stone house. I thought at first there were no candles because he had eaten them, and then as he searched for an extra bowl, I could tell by the way he reached around his shelves, I could tell the man was blind.

  The blind farmer told me his wife had died early in the famine. They had not eaten the planting seed like everyone else had because the farmer said that would have been giving up hope. There was only chaff bread and water, and the farmer could not see that the wife was giving him hers to eat, and so she starved. The blind farmer had survived the winter eating his dead wife’s shoes, throwing the heels to the dog. In my hunger I drank the soup, and it was rank with leather.

  I accepted the farmer’s invitation to spend a day and a night to rest. The dog’s mouth foamed when it was around me so I stretched a hammock made from an old sheet in the rafters above the well. I was unaccustomed to sleeping at night, so I joined the farmer in his rocky fields, turning over the soil, hauling stones, planting wheat by moonlight, the sun not mattering to the blind farmer, him fìnding it easier to work in the coolness of the evening. I stayed for several weeks, working at night, sleeping in the well-house rafters during the heat of the day, the old blind man napping in his windowless house. We lived on rough chaff bread and his dead wife’s shoes, throwing the heels to the dog.

  The wheat sprouted and my hair grew even longer, covering my shoulders and chest. The large dog was weak and friendly, so sometimes I would go into the blind man’s house after our work was done. I would sit and listen to him talk about his wife. One day when I was brushing my hair with my mother’s brush the farmer asked me to brush my hair outside. He said the sound of it was too painful, it reminded him of his wife brushing her hair, so I went outside and sat by the well. Later the farmer came to the door and asked me to come back and brush my hair inside, so I did. I brushed my hair in the darkness, listening to the old man cry.

  After bringing in the small crop we were very excited to bake the first loaf of bread. While the farmer ground the wheat and made flour I washed my hair in a bucket by the well. I let it dry down my back. My muscles were wrung out from swinging the scythe and my hair cooled and soothed me.

  That evening, as we sat and waited for the bread to finish baking, the large dog growled at the door. I was so accustomed to living with the blind farmer that when I went to the door I forgot what I looked like to the world. In the yard, a crowd of people had gathered, and when they lifted their lanterns to my face, they screamed and fled, calling for pitchforks and torches and pikes. Living with the farmer had helped me forget I was on the run from what I had done to my family. I thought that the people were part of a search party hunting me down. I thought my guilt was larger than the smell of fresh bread baking in a hungry, famined land.

  I told my friend that I had to leave. He said to wait until I at least tasted the fresh baking bread. I told him he would be in trouble if he was found giving me refuge. The farmer did not understand. He stroked my hair and said goodbye. I let the dog lick my hand and I was out the door.

  I had just made it to the well house when the mob returned and shouted for the devil to come out of the house.

  Make a light and show yourself, devil! the people shouted. The old man said there was no light and the old dog barked.

  The crowd said Hear his blasphemy and hear him barking! The demon! Luring innocent hungry people to their death with the smell of baking bread. See how the yard is littered with the shoes of the dead! See how his fields are empty at day and tended at night by spirits! Come out, devil! they said.

  Come in, said the blind farmer. The bread is done and out of the oven. There is plenty for all, come in and eat.

  We won’t be fooled! said the mob and they tossed torches at his door and threw a cover over his chimney so that the old man was driven out into the yard by the choking smoke.

  The people threw their pitchforks and their pikes. I hid in the rafters of the well house.

  When the blind man and the dog lay dead in the yard the people brought out the loaf of fresh bread.

  Don’t eat that, that’s the devil’s bread, some said.

  The people looked at the bread.

  Maybe devil bread won’t hurt you, someone said.

  They looked at the bread.

  Maybe he really wasn’t a devil, and we can eat the bread, somebody said.

  As they ate the bread, they poked at the blind man’s body.

  Probably not a devil, but strange-looking eyes, they said.

  Yes, they said, surely not a devil but surely looking a lot like a devil. Anybody can see his eyes look like a devil’s eyes might look like. He shouldn’t have been looking like a devil and baking bread, they agreed. When they finished eating, they collected their tools from out of the farmer and his dog and they all went home.

  I wasn’t sure what to say after Mr. Watt finished his story. Was I supposed to beat his story like Lonny beat the cook’s? Was I supposed to beat his story of somebody doing something bad to somebody black with my own story? I didn’t want to tell him that somehow his story had made me hungry. I finished covering him in his burned places with the lard and on purpose passed the candle close to his face. I saw where the sunlight the white-hulled sailors let in had burned him, and now I saw that the sun had also left him blind. I didn’t know if he knew that yet, and I wasn’t going to tell him, especially after his story. All I could think of to say was to thank him quietly on my way out the wheelhouse door.

  Thank you for the rich story, I said in my lisping whisper.

  I seemed to be getting along with being useless pretty well but being evil was something I was going to have to make friends with. I was useless to John when he tried to haul in his net that night, useless to Lonny running the winches, useless to the other men, who tried to take the meshes aboard. The crew could not get more than a corner of John’s precious net aboard, and John was worried that they would tear it. Black Master Chief Har
old came and went, cursing and cursed by John who asked for still more power. I was only helpful in stirring John’s anger when he saw me, the evil boy who had drowned the two prison men, and I was sure John thought he was only two men short of bringing the hundred-ton net aboard.

  Useless was pretty easy to work into. I sat on the outside wheelhouse steps and watched the turning stars while the men struggled with John’s net. Useless was easy, evil would be something else. I wondered how far back the evil started in me, figuring an absolute place to begin would be sticking Big Miss Magine with my butter-turned knife. I could see how evil was working its way right along with me on the ship, from smacking the Idiot upside his head with the big spoon to having no intention of holding on to the knotted rope if the prison men had tried to grab it. I watched some stars fall and wondered if soon I would begin walking in a crouch like a housebreaker beneath a window. I wondered if I would begin holding a hand inside my shirt like I was holding something I had stolen, or like I was concealing a dagger. I wondered if I would begin to take up spitting.

  I had just been thinking how much more work being evil would be than being useless when the aft deck went quiet. John worked the men until both winches broke and the men’s hands were raw and bleeding from trying to haul in the sharp-wired cables and slick ropes by hand. The men fell around exhausted on the deck and John packed a bundle of net-mending tools and twine to repair the places in his net the white-hulled ship had sliced with its propeller. I stayed hidden from him until he dove over the rail, swimming deep. Giving evil a try, I damned his soul, cursed his return, and spit.

  A small lantern burned on a cord swinging random shadows around the winches. Lonny went to sleep on the main hatch after turning out the decklights. He tried to get the Idiot to sleep alongside him, for warmth, he said, but the Idiot preferred to sleep in a lifeboat. Left to themselves and tired, the men sought their own comforts; the weeping man who said Fuck covered himself in rotting finish fish and mud from where a bottom net had lain, and Ira Dench, in preparation for the rogue wave he was certain I would be responsible for, finally went topside to lash himself to the mast.